[pozarnsk]

Hi all,
I have a question about legal rights and the actions of CPS towards adoption by foster parents. First alitte background on us.

We have been fostering a 3 year old boy for almost 8months now. There is no court hearing until the 1 year point whereas they will decide to either give the dad an extension or start termination. No one in the family is doing anything "right" at this point, and the plan is that he stays with us until this 12month hearing.

First question is when do legal rights kick in for foster parents. 9months? or 12 month? I have heard both in Texas.

Second question is I am hearing horror stories from some past foster parents that CPS does not want foster parents to get any rights and will pull the kids from the foster home at the 11th month for example just to avoid this. Does anyone have any experience with this??

I'm wondering when I should be getting a lawyer.

Thanks in advance,
Jared

[bethy724]

I have not heard of CPS pulling kids so the foster parents so they have no rights, but I have been told (point blank-by worker giving friendly advise) Do not piss CPS off - they have a lot of power in placing/pulling kids. I am in TX. I always advocated for my child & careful to take this advise-its too bad I had to use energy in both directions.
It is odd that a childs case is not reviewed every 3-6 months-I think there are laws regarding this. Hopefully your child has a court appointed atty-you may want to contact that person. Best of luck!

[jigger]

Okay -- first of all. There should be a hearing every 3 months to review your foster child's case in front of a judge. You CAN go to these hearings if you want to. Bio-parents have one year from the date of removal to work the case plan provided to them by CPS when the kids were removed. At any time during that year, the CPS worker can recommend that the goal for the children change from reunification to adoption. At the end of the year, there will be a final hearing where the judge will either terminate, reunify or give the bio-parents an extension. At six months the foster parents have the right to hire a lawyer BUT there's not much they can do other than advise you. I would recommend that you become very involved in advocating for your foster child. Make sure you know when hearings are and attend them. Meet your FS' guardian ad litem, attorney ad litem and CASA (if there is one). Send progress reports, pictures and anything else that shows good progress. Basically, just keep in close touch with everyone involved in the case. The more they know about you the better. Also, make friends with the CPS worker. They can be your best advocate.

Good Luck.

[pozarnsk]

The child's atty and the CASA worker are definately in our corner. I'm just concerned that when they say they would never recommend him going to the father and what they are ultimately going to do may be completely different stories. CPS is still focused on reunification even though no one is following their plans even after 8 months. When do I have rights in court. Example when can I send an atty in to argue before a judge that he should stay with us? Good to know no one has heard of CPS pulling kids to avoid the foster parents getting any rights. From what I can see at this point, CPS is not my friend. I do however put on a smiley face for them of course. I want everyone involved in this to like us, including the bio family.

[jigger]

Unfortunately, an attorney can't stand up in court and advocate for you in this process, even after six months. The good thing is that now the judge will actually CONSIDER your point of view. At this point, you are pretty much considered an employee of the state. An attorney can give you counsel and advice but cannot go to court on your behalf. We tried too. It's not a bad idea to talk to an attorney though. They can give you tips on how to work within the system more confidently.

In my experience, the state has to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that the bio-parents aren't fit before they will even consider termination. That means that they tend to hang on to that "reunification" goal waaaaay too long. Once we finally got someone to decide that RU wasn't gonna work, the process moved pretty fast.But that process happened with the CW, GAL and AAL, not our lawyer.

Good luck to you. . .I've been there and you are in the middle of a nerve-wracking part of this process. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you and your FC.

[flyawaynet]

When I was a CASA volunteer I heard a lot about the "concurrent" plans. It's a state requirement that CPS work towards the reunification right up to the day rights are terminated. BUT, they also, from the moment the child/children have been taken away are working on kinship placements and secondary placements for the child should reunification not work out.

It's always frustrating when you have to spend all that time on someone when you can see they are obviously not trying to work the service plans and such, but at least they have a secondary plan.

I'd second jiggy's suggestion to talk to an attorney, but I'd make it the attorney ad litem already on the case, and the guardian ad litem. As a former CASA I can tell you that foster parents gave me more information than anyone about the children I worked with.

[flyawaynet]

Hey, your name is jigger, not jiggy, sorry.

[pozarnsk]

OK a little update. It has now been 9.5 months and apparantly there was a hearing a week ago. More of the same, he stays in foster care, there is a "mediation" on March 12th before the 12 month hearing. No one will tell us how the Bios are doing on their service plans or anything that is going on with the case at this point. How can I get this info. I do not want to appear nosy. What is this mediation with the Bio family? Another attempt at a secondary option? I feel like We are being left out of the loop at this point, and it is very frustrating. Any advice??

[fostermomintx]

You should be able to ask your foster child's worker about what is going on. I had a really good worker for my son who kept me informed about what they were planning to do every step of the way. Also, usually mediation means that they are speaking with the family about relinquishing the rights to the child in exchange for pictures, letters, etc. That's what happened with my son. The bparents both got attorneys and were advised that the State was going to court to terminate rights and if they wanted to not lose all contact with the child they would go to a mediation hearing and relinquish their rights (and if they lost in court they would not have any contact).

Both of my son's bparents were there and agreed to sign over their rights in order to maintain contact, i.e. I agreed to 4 visits per year plus pictures/letters, etc. It has worked out well for my situation because I want my son to know who his biological family is and not feel like he's been abandoned (when he is old enough to understand). His bparents are harmless; bmom missed 3 out of the 4 last year and bfather missed only 1.

I would think that your worker or the child's worker would contact you about the mediation since it concerns you, if you are interested in keeping him. Contact either worker or the guardian ad litem and ask questions, you do have a right to know what is going on since you are his caregivers. Don't hesitate to ask questions!

Good luck to you!

[pozarnsk]

Understand but the variable we are dealing with after the bioparents is some other relative coming forward. No one has yet and it has been almost 10 months but if they think the family will lose him someone may step up who knows. We were hoping to fight this after the 12 month point, but this mediation thing is a new one. Question; Is the mediation something I should have been formally invited to? If I wasn't is that bad meaning I'm not in consideration for his permanent placement?

-pozarnsk

[texastanya]

In our situation, we did not attend the mediation, nor were we asked to - however... Our boys caseworker called us prior to the mediation to ask us what terms we would be willing to have. Visitation? Mail Contact? Phone Contact? etc.

If this is the mediation hearing prior to a TPR trial, they will try to negotiate with the bioparents by giving them something (visitation, mail contact, etc) in exchange for voluntarily terminating their parental rights. In our case, we agreed to having a p.o. box that bioparents can send stuff to the kids, but we don't have to give it to them if we don't feel it is appropriate - and luckily, we do not have to send them anything at all. With the visitation, I did not want to do it, but the mediator told us that he thought we should go ahead and agree to it, because chances are biomom would not hold up her end of the deal. The Order of Termination stated that biomom had to pay for the supervision through a 3rd party agency which ended up being $120 for 2 hours, and that if she missed 3 consecutive visits, all future ones were cancelled. As it turns out, the mediator was right - She missed the first three months (Sept., Oct., Nov.) then called the 3rd party agency at Christmas to see if she could set up a visit. We said no since she already missed three, and we truly feel she is not a good influence on the children.

As for family members - our kiddos had none. BUT, I believe the state always looks for family members to take the children because it is cheaper for the state. They don't pay family to care for the child like they do foster or foster-to adopt parents.

HTH,

[pozarnsk]

OK,
Sounds like we need to call around and get some info on the venue of the mediation. It hasn't even been officially scheduled yet, so I don't want to get too nosy just yet.

The only question I have remaining is how are they going to offer the Bios terms of termination if they don't even know who the kid is going to go to? This I would think would be the biggest factor in their decision to relinquish their rights. It sounds like in everyone else's case that the bios knew the foster parents were going for the adoption going into the mediation. It almost seems like there are too many moving variables at this point for a mediation to even occur.

-pozarnsk

[fostermomintx]

In my case there were no relatives that were willing or able to take him. I was told of the mediation date/time but was not invited at first. I got a call in the middle of it that the bparents wanted to speak to me first so I left work and went to talk to them. That's when they agreed to sign the papers. They just wanted assurance that I would be adopting him. I had a good relationship with them and vice versa. Usually mediation is something they try to do before going to Court in order to avoid having to build a case to present to a judge or jury.

Definitely call your worker and the child's worker and get clarification. But to my knowledge mediation is the last step before going to Court to get the termination of parental rights...

[fostermomintx]

FYI...My son was removed in January 2005 and by April the State had decided to move towards TPR because the parents were doing their plan (classes) but weren't doing other things like getting steady jobs, a place to live, etc. They weren't going "the extra mile" just the bare minimum...

The mediation took place that September and their last visit with him was in November. And then I supervise the visits that were agreed upon in the mediation. Like I said bmom has missed 3 and has disappeared. Bdad is still hanging in there with only 1 missed visit but now has another child so maybe he's not so gung-ho with keeping contact with my son...

[pozarnsk]

I just found out that the mediation was for the other (13yr old) child pulled from the same home. She has an aunt willing to take her, and maybe ours too. I've met her nad I doubt it though. In my experience with all this with this "family" saying they will do something and actually doing it are 2 different things. Especially when it means committing to a three yr old boy for the next 15 years. Too many moving variables at this point. I think the bottom line is we some how need to have this thing hit the 12 month point before we can do anything right? I've heard some people say you can do something at 9 months in TX too? Anyone know? As far as getting a lawyer.........